from the low countries

night now refuses to darken. this season rejects blackness, it pushes back at the night. night, we are told, is supposed to envelope, to blanket and cover, but this does none of those things – the day fades out, dims, begins to opacate, but the moon keeps throwing sharp shadows and the air itself is [...]

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welling ink upward

i made coffee this morning and went to my desk, hoping the writing-streak begun yesterday would carry over into today. it did not. a few sentences in, the silence i’ve come to dread over past weeks returning to cloud ink, i reached for the nearest book which was not women, ritual, and family in renaissance [...]

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sweetness

sweetness in the belly is a novel by camilla gibb. a while ago sarah told everyone they had to read it. a few days before we went to saskatchewan i finally started, and then could not stop: i read it at tutoring, in parking lots, in line at the library, sitting at my desk, and [...]

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once upon a time, the end.

i start to think i need a shaykh to put me into khalwa for a few months.
years ago emad joked that i’d already given bay’ to my nafs.
which is unfortunate, because you don’t often hear of a nafs putting people into khalwa.

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inna’Llaha dhu karamin

this was my weekend.
dhikr jam session tonight at our house with haji haroon. he’ll talk about the history of the various qasidahs we’ll sing, and about knowing malcolm x, and maybe his days in jazz clubs.
but mostly we will sing. and he will play the duff. and the voices of Remembrance will rise into [...]

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be not too hard

for days i have tried to start sentences – i have wanted to write about new leaves and about the large white moon and about rituals of spring, and i have wanted to write about the nightly frog, cricket chorus rising from the sloughs all around, and about poplar fuzz carried through the air, and [...]

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